Emacs Builds

Nightly binary builds of Emacs for macOS as a self-contained Emacs.app, with native-compilation.

Features

Self-contained Emacs.app application bundle, with no external dependencies.
Native-compilation (gccemacs).
Native JSON parsing via libjansson.
SVG rendering via librsvg.
Various image formats are supported via macOS native image APIs.
Xwidget-webkit support is enabled, allowing access to a embedded WebKit-based browser with M-x xwidget-webkit-browse-url.
Native XML parsing via libxml2.
Dynamic module loading.
Includes the fix-window-role and system-appearance patches from the excellent emacs-plus project.
Emacs source is fetched from the emacs-mirror/emacs GitHub repository.
Build creation is transparent and public through the use of GitHub Actions, allowing anyone to inspect git commit SHAs, full source code, and exact commands used to produce a build. This is especially important right now as builds are not yet signed and notarized.
Uses build-emacs-for-macos to build the self-contained application bundle.

System Requirements

Intel-based Mac running macOS 10.15.x or later.

Downloads

See the Releases page to download latest builds.

Nightly builds of Emacs are for the part just fine, but if you don't like living too close to the edge, see issue #7 Known Good Nightly Builds for a list of recent nightly builds which have been actively used by a living being without any issues.

Untrusted Application

Currently builds are not signed or notarized, meaning macOS cannot verify Emacs.app came from a trusted developer, and by default you are not given an option to trust the app and open it.

Simplest way around this is to right-click (or control-click) on the Emacs app in Finder and select "Open". You will then be given the same warning as before, but with a "Open" button now available to trust and open the app. After that you can open the application like normal without any warnings.

Builds will soon be signed and notarized, progress is tracked in Issue #1.

Use Emacs.app as `emacs` CLI Tool

As the application bundle is self-contained, the main executable needs to be run from within the application bundle. This means a simple symlink to Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs will not work. Instead the best approach is to create a shell alias called emacs pointing to the right place.

For example, this will expose both emacs and emacsclient:

if [ -f "/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs" ]; then
  export EMACS="/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs"
  alias emacs="$EMACS -nw"
fi

if [ -f "/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacsclient" ]; then
  alias emacsclient="/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacsclient"
fi

Setting the EMACS variable to the binary path seems to be a good idea, as some tools seem to use it to figure out the path to Emacs' executable, including doom-emacs' doom CLI tool.

Build Process

Building Emacs is done using the jimeh/build-emacs-for-macos build script, executed within a GitHub Actions workflow. This is why macOS 10.15.x or later is required, as it's the oldest version of macOS available in GitHub Actions.

Full history for all builds is available on GitHub Actions here.

Nightly builds are scheduled for 0:00 UTC every night, based on the latest commit from the master branch of the emacs-mirror/emacs repository. This means a nightly build will only be produced if there have been new commits since the last nightly build.

Issues / To-Do

Please see Issues for details of things to come, or to report issues.

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